HARBANS SINGH Vs. FINANCIAL COMMISSIONER

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This civil writ petition under Articles 226 and 227 of the Constitution of India has been filed under the following circumstances :-

(2.) The impugned orders of respondent Nos. 1 to 4 may appear to have been passed in exercise of valid jurisdiction. The dismissal of an earlier ejectment application would not have the effect of condoning all later defaults in the regular payments of rent. The earlier application could in fact be taken into account to show that the petitioners have been acting contumaciously and that if there was any regularity in their conduct, it was in the matter of making defaults rather than in making payments of rent on due date. The defence pleas, that the dismissal of the earlier ejectment application operated as res judicata in the later proceedings or that the relationship of landlord and tenant did not exist between the parties or that the agreed rate of rent or the mode of its payment were different from those alleged by the landlord, had to be taken in the proceedings before respondent Nos. 1 to 4. The Revenue Authorities were not supposed to make any directions for the benefit of the absentee tenants who had not cared to put in any appearance. The Courts of competent jurisdiction have found that the petitioners were guilty of contumacy in the payments of rent. This finding had been arrived at by the Revenue Authorities in bona fide exercise of the jurisdiction vested in them by law. Section 14-A of the Act is meant for cases like the present where the landlord has to come repeatedly to the Court for the realisation of the arrears of rent. If the ejectment decree is one of the misfortunes which has followed the petitioners' involvement in a murder case, then the petitioners have themselves to blame unless they can show that their misfortune was the result of any wrongful act of their landlord. The latter's right to regularly receive rent for the land, which was being cultivated without any interruption during the petitioners' period of detention in jail, remains unaffected by the murder case. In any case, if this murder case was to be made a sufficient cause for getting the ex part proceedings set aside, an application to that effect should have been made to respondent No. 4, who had passed the ejectment decree.

(3.) I see no grounds for interference and dismiss the writ petition with costs. Petition dismissed.